The UN's International Decade of the Rights of Indigenous People recently ended in the failure of negotiating governments to accommodate, within international law, the concept of a 'collective' right to land. The consequences of such a failure are far-reaching for the world's indigenous peoples. This book, which arose out of the 13th annual Oxford Amnesty Lecture series, brings together a number of experts from diverse fields and organisations- anthropologists,historians, lawyers, conservationists, and campaigners - to debate the whole notion of 'Land Rights'. What do indigenous people mean when they invoke their collective right to land? Set against these rights are the individual rights of property-owners or corporations. How are national governments, andinternational law, to arbitrate between them?

Over the last decade, Australian governments have introduced a series of land reforms in communities on Indigenous land. This book is the first in-depth study of these significant and far reaching reforms. It explains how the reforms came about, what they do and their consequences for Indigenous landowners and community residents. It also revisits the rationale for their introduction and discusses the significant gap between public debate about the reforms and their actual impact. Drawing on international research, the book describes how it is necessary to move beyond the concepts of communal and individual ownership in order to understand the true significance of the reforms. The book's fresh perspective on land reform and careful assessment of key land reform theories will be of interest to scholars of indigenous land rights, land law, indigenous studies and aboriginal culture not only in Australia but also in any other country with an interest in indigenous land rights.

This book, based on the prestigious Oxford Amnesty Lecture series, focuses on human rights abuses, and the ways in which they are interpreted. The collection includes contributions by Tzvetan Todorov, Michael Ignatieff, Peter Singer, Gitta Sereny, Susan Sontag, and Eva Hoffman, with commentaries on their essays by Niall Fergusson, Timothy Garton Ash, John Broome, Hermione Lee and others.

Based on the influential Oxford Amnesty Lectures, this volume examines the forces shaping urbanisation today and the divisions that threaten the world's cities; it considers too what can and should be done to bring these divisions to an end. Many contemporary issues are addressed, including the impact of globalisation and migration on cities, the new development paradigm being adopted by international institutions, the challenges facing urban planners, and the suffering of the homeless.

This book brings together for the first time five French directors who have established themselves as among the most exciting and significant working today: Bruno Dumont, Robert Guédiguian, Laurent Cantet, Abdellatif Kechiche, and Claire Denis. Whatever their chosen habitats or shifting terrains, each of these highly distinctive auteurs has developed unique strategies of representation and framing that reflect a profound investment in the geophysical world. The book proposes that we think about cinematographic space in its many different forms simultaneously (screenspace, landscape, narrative space, soundscape, spectatorial space). Through a series of close and original readings of selected films, it posits a new "space of the cinematic subject." Accessible and wide-ranging, this volume opens up new areas of critical enquiry in the expanding interdisciplinary field of space studies. It will be of immediate interest to students and researchers working not only in film studies and film philosophy, but also in French/Francophone studies, postcolonial studies, gender and cultural studies. Listen to author James S. Williams discuss his new book, Space and Being in Contemporary French Cinema, in this engaging interview: http://newbooksinfrenchstudies.com/2013/07/31/james-s-williams-space-and-being-in-contemporary-french-cinema-manchester-university-press-2013/

This handbook will be a comprehensive interdisciplinary overview of indigenous peoples’ rights. Chapters by experts in the field will examine legal, philosophical, sociological and political issues, addressing a wide range of themes at the heart of debates on the rights of indigenous peoples. The book will address not only the major questions, such as ‘who are indigenous peoples? What is distinctive about their rights? How are their rights constructed and protected? What is the relationship between national indigenous rights regimes and international norms? but also themes such as culture, identity, genocide, globalization and development, rights institutionalization and the environment.

This work consists of two parts: The Idea of Public Reason Revisited and The Law of Peoples. Taken together, they are the culmination of more than 50 years of reflection on liberalism and on some pressing problems of our times. Originally published: 1999.

This is the 2002 volume of the internationally renowned Oxford Amnesty Lectures series. Sex Rights seeks to explore the role and limitations of ideas of human rights in the area of gender and sexuality; in particular, when considering the social position of women (straight or gay), gay men, trans-gendered and transsexual persons. The authors are internationally distinguished writers from the areas of literature, social theory, law, and journalism, and include Judith Butler and Marina Warner. This is an essential collection of essays for academics, human rights activists, those with a general interest in politics and human rights, and those concerned with questions of gender and sexuality.

The keywords of the Enlightenment-freedom, tolerance, rights, equality-are today heard everywhere, and they are used to endorse a wide range of positions, some of which are in perfect contradiction. While Orwell’s 1984 claims that there is one phrase in the English language that resists translation into Newspeak, namely the opening lines of that key Enlightenment text, the Declaration of Independence: ’We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...’, we also find the Wall Street Journal saying of the Iraq War that the US was ’fighting for the very notion of the Enlightenment’. It seems we are no longer sure whether these truths are self-evident nor quite what they might mean today. Based on the critically acclaimed Oxford Amnesty Lectures series, this book brings together a number of major international figures to debate the history of freedom, tolerance, equality, and to explore the complex legacy of the Enlightenment for human rights. The lectures are published here with responses from other leading figures in the field.

There are few issues more urgently in need of intelligent analysis both in the UK and elsewhere than those relating to displacement, asylum, and migration. In this volume, based on the 2004 Oxford Amnesty Lectures, major figures in philosophy, political science, law, psychoanalysis, sociology, and literature address the challenges that displacement, asylum, and migration pose to our notions of human rights. Each lecture is accompanied by a critical response from another leadingthinker in the field.The volume contains lectures by Slavoj Zizek, Bhikhu Parekh, Ali A.Mazrui, Matthew J. Gibney, Saskia Sassen, Harold Hongju Koh, Caryl Phillips, and Jacqueline Rose, with critical responses from Michael Ignatieff, Seyla Benhabib, Iftikhar Malik, Melissa Lane, Christian Joppke, Rey Koslowski, Elleke Boehmer, and Ali Abunimah.This is the twelfth volume of Oxford Amnesty Lectures to be published since 1992.'All good citizens should probably want to buy them . . . simply because they are published in support of such a good cause. It turns out, though, that no self-sacrifice is involved. [These] are immensely rich, challenging, stimulating volumes . . . The contributors' lists are star-studded . . . and each book has a clear, coherent, overarching theme, despite the extreme diversity of the individual lectures' (The Independent, April 10, 2003).